1. Your favorite novel.

Choosing one novel would be impossible, so I will give you a list of the books (novels and others) that have stuck with me over the years. Rebeccaby Daphne du Maurier is still the best suspense novel I’ve ever read. More recently, Terror at Bottle Creek by Watt Key brought all of my childhood fears into one terrifying novel. I loved it!

Wicked by Gregory Maguire elevated my childhood obsession of OZ to levels I never knew were possible. Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner is pure brilliance, as is Bridget Jones’ Diary. I believe both exemplify Women’s Lit and shows how complicated, smart, sexy, and funny we all can be.

From Adrift by Steven Callahan, I know what to do if ever lost at sea and will never forget his detailed account, and Pat Conroy’s Lords of Discipline still breaks my heart. Joshilyn Jackson’s Gods in Alabama is so good I’m a little angry that I didn’t write it. So good, I use excerpts from the opening chapter whenever I need an audition monologue for a southern play.

But, as far as the book I have read and re-read, leaving notes in the margins and underlying important passages, that would be The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. Corrie died before I could thank her for sharing her story of heroism and miracles. Her bravery got me through some of the toughest times in my life and reminds me always that my life is pretty good and my challenges are not impossible.

2. What inspired you to start writing?

I first began writing in April 2003. My husband was an Army Lieutenant in Iraq, and I was terrified of his being in combat. After work as a puppet stitcher and performer (truth sometimes is better than fiction), I was driving home through downtown Savannah, GA. A war protester stepped in front of my car with a sign that read, “Who would Jesus bomb?” “Jesus has nothing to do with this, jackass,” I thought as I swerved to miss him. I drove directly to the Savannah Morning News office and demanded to the first person I saw that the families of the soldiers receive the same news coverage given the war protesters. The unsuspecting sports editor challenged me to write a column detailing Jay and my war-spurned separation. Perhaps I was sleep deprived because I accepted the challenge and brought him three column samples the next week. He hired me. In 2005, Chicken Soup for the Soul picked up one piece for an anthology. So, I guess you could say then and now I am inspired by those topics, characters, and voices that get under my skin and into my heart. And, I’ve learned over the years that writing is a much better coping skill for stress than some of the other coping skills I’ve tried.

3. Do you have (or have you ever had) a muse? If so, who/what?

Nope.

4. Your favorite poem.

“The Bells” by Edgar Allan Poe. My 7th Grade English teacher introduced me to the world of Poe and changed my life for good. I’d never known writing could be that good, just sink your teeth into it good! That year, I started storytelling competitions searching for any excuse to read or perform Poe.

5. Your favorite Alabama plant.

Any of them that don’t attract mosquitos.

6. Five words which describe you.

Eclectic, humorous, enthusiastic, odd, and kind

7. One way in which AWC changed/impacted your life.

After being away from Alabama, my home, for 15 years, I was afraid Alabama would not accept me as its native child any longer and that the professional writers would not accept me or my work. AWC quickly put that fear to rest as I attended the July 2016 conference in Birmingham.

8. What are you working on right now?

I’m working on the next in the Jubilee Bells saga. Warrior Child occurs over the same time period as Jubilee Bells, but the reader watches an insurgency war through the eyes of a child as Bandit, the protagonist, evolves from favorite son to orphan to child soldier then cherished foundling. My agent is currently shopping Jubilee Bells, so hopefully by the time a publisher is found, I will have Warrior Child finished.

9. Your favorite place in Alabama and why.

My “forever home” in midtown Mobile where my husband, son, and myself moved this past spring.

10. One thing you need right now to help you as a writer.

How about four? Discipline. Energy. Time. Badass-level confidence

To learn more about Jodie, visit www.jodiecainsmith.com or head over to Amazon to purchase her debut, award-winning novel, The Woods at Barlow Bend.

And yes, this writer tweets. Try @jodiecainsmith to keep up with her readings and travels.

1. Your favorite novel.

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.

2. What inspired you to start writing?

My first bits of writing were love poems … for my mother. (I still write love poems for my mother!)

3. Do you have (or have you ever had) a muse? If so, who/what?

Currently the cello is my muse! I am new to the instrument, and I find playing music really feeds my creativity in all areas.

4. Your favorite poem.

“A Secret Life” by Stephen Dunn. For many years, writing was my secret life!

5. Your favorite Alabama plant.

Dogwood tree.

6. Five words which describe you.

leftie, impetuous, restless, grateful, pilgrim

7. One way in which the Alabama Writer’s Conclave changed/impacted your life.

Not only has AWC helped introduce me to the Alabama community of writers AND helped me hone my craft, volunteering in various capacities has helped me to remember that perhaps the most fulfilling part of being a writer is to serve other writers — to offer encouragement and experience to help other people tell their stories.

8. What are you working on right now?

I write poems every day, and I have a number of projects in various stages — four books are under contract to release over the next several years. And I have just completed my first (50 pages!) nonfiction book proposal for a memoir called CELLO LOVE: THE ART OF BEING A BEGINNER. If it sells (fingers crossed!), finishing that book will be my top priority.

9. Your favorite place in Alabama and why.

“The Wall” in Florence, Alabama. The chapel at Bellingrath Gardens. Mentone. Gee’s Bend. Fairhope. My back deck in summer with my family around the table and the mosquito lanterns lit. All of these are places where I have felt a deep connection with the world and all that is greater than me.

10. One thing you need right now to help you as a writer.

Oh wow. There is always something new to learn! I think I need to write more from a place of wonder and delight… which means LIVING more in wonder and delight. Being present. Laughing. Giving myself permission to PLAY, rather than work.

Irene will be reading at Shine Bright: A Poetry Reading in Celebration of the Winter Solstice alongside other local poets and writers. Featured poets will read on the subject of light and winter. Light refreshments. Open mic to follow.When: December 21st at 7:00 pm

Where: DISCO (Desert Island Supply Co.) in Birmingham, Alabama

To learn more about Irene’s current projects, visit her website at www.irenelatham.com. A long-time blogger, Irene shares her thoughts on life, family, writing, and hope at www.irenelatham.blogspot.com. She tweets at @irene_latham.

1. Your favorite novel.

That’s a tough one. I’ll go with a couple of my most recent favorite novels: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr; The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, Miss Jane by Brad Watson, and Dispatches from Pluto by Richard Grant.

2. What inspired you to start writing?

Teachers inspired me (along with a certain sense of loneliness and introversion). I wrote my 1st story as a 6th grader (I’m not saying it was good), and my 1st poem the next year (a children’s poem, “The Cannibal”). Various teachers told me I was talented and they encouraged me to keep journals. In college, my creative writing professor (Dr. Claude Clayton Smith) entered one of my stories in the Hollins Literary Festival and it won first place. That same story was listed in Writer’s Digest in the top 100 stories. Also, I’m an avid reader, so writing followed that love.

3. Do you have (or have you ever had) a muse? If so, who/what?

I’m not sure he’s my muse, but he shows up in my dreams quite often — George Bernard Shaw. He makes himself comfortable in my dreams and talks about writing.

4. Your favorite poem.

That’s an unfair question for a poet. I’ll choose one from the past (“The Abortion” by Anne Sexton) and a current one (“Home” by Warsan Shire). Both are haunting to me.

5. Your favorite Alabama plant.

The iris is my favorite plant. I love purple irises.

6. Five words which describe you.

Empathetic, Anxious, Introverted, Tenacious, Ruminative

7. One way in which AWC changed/impacted your life.

The AWC with its members, Conclave, competitions, etc. validated me as a “real writer.” I’ve made wonderful creative friends who love words like I do. The Conclave provides learning and networking experiences. I read my work in front of an audience for the first time at the Conclave.

8. What are you working on right now?

My free time is spent promoting/marketing my poetry collection How We Bury Our Dead (recently published by Negative Capability Press). I’m also working on a series of essays (memoir). And lately, Eve (yes, THAT Eve) keeps whispering in my ear about a poetry project she wants to be part of. (I’m waiting to hear Shaw’s thoughts on that!)

9. Your favorite place in Alabama and why.

I love Fairhope with its artists, Gulf Shores with its beautiful beaches, and Mobile where my two daughters were born.

10. One thing you need right now to help you as a writer.

Time. I work full-time as a law library manager, and I’m involved in various organizations. Add to that a husband, two grown daughers, twin granddaughters, an elderly mother, and a book to promote, and whew, you get the idea. (I also need more visits from Shaw.)

Faith Garbin is currently doing readings for her poetry collection. Learn more about Faith at www.faithgarbin.com and contact her for readings. Facebook: @FaithGarbinAuthor
Twitter: @FaithGarbin1

Jennifer Horne on everything from gardening to Zelda Fitzgerald.

1. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE NOVEL?

This seems like a simple question, and yet I am astonished to find that I do not have an answer to it! My favorite novel is the one I am immersed in at a given moment, that takes me beyond myself, into another world, and back to myself again, changed. I think novels become favorites by speaking to you at a particular time in your life, and therefore my favorite novel changes as I do, from A Wrinkle in Time to the Narnia books to The Brothers Karamazov to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to The Waves to Look Homeward, Angel to The Sun Also Rises to The Golden Bowl to Sophie’s Choice to Beloved to Everything is Illuminated to Ahab’s Wife to, most recently, Miss Jane, with lots of other stops along the way. (My five-words description below in question #6 should probably read “not easy to pin down.”)

2. WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO START WRITING?

From the time I could read I also enjoyed making up stories and poems, and my mother, a writer, encouraged me in this. I wish she were alive so that we could still call each other when we’d come up with a good line for a poem and wanted to share it with someone.

For me, that sharing has always been a part of the pleasure of writing — I loved the way that writing could corral emotions, sense impressions, questions, imaginings into a form that could communicate something of what it felt like to experience the world through my particular lens.

3. DO YOU HAVE (OR HAVE YOU EVER HAD) A MUSE? IF SO, EXPLAIN.

Entire books have been written about the nature of the (traditionally female) muse in relation to feminism — is a woman who writes her own muse? If there’s one thing that over time has inspired, instructed, and engaged me, it would be the natural world, a source of comfort, metaphor, and, since I like to garden, good physical labor that takes me out of my head and into my body, where poems arise.

4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE POEM?

So many beloveds! One of my very favorites that I’ve been memorizing recently is Theodore Roethke’s “The Waking.” I love the images, the mystical elements, the repetition, the way it circles back on itself and gives me something new every time I read it. I find that the poems I want to memorize tend to be somewhat incantatory, reaching back in their rhythms to the beginnings of poetic history.

5. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ALABAMA PLANT?

Although I’m partial to oak leaf hydrangea and wild magnolia, the one that makes me happiest is the surprise lily, showing up in unexpected places just when all the plants of summer have died out and gone brown, and there it is in its showy red exuberance.

6. FIVE WORDS WHICH DESCRIBE YOU.

Stubborn. 
Curious. 
Loyal. 
Rebellious. 
Orderly.

7. ONE WAY IN WHICH THE ALABAMA WRITER’S CONCLAVE IMPACTED YOUR LIFE.

I’ve been aware of the AWC for a number of years and had the opportunity to speak on an editors’ panel one time when the Conclave met in Tuscaloosa. This past summer I attended my first meeting as an AWC member and felt such a good sense of community and connection among the writers there. Writing is a notoriously solitary calling, and it helps to connect with other writers online and, especially, in person, to share ideas and questions and simply to be among others who “get” you and what you do.

8. WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON RIGHT NOW?

My main project right now is a memoir-influenced biography of Sara Mayfield, an Alabama writer who is best known for her biography of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. I’m in the “messy draft” stage, finishing up research, and excited about keeping moving toward a finished draft. With my husband, Don Noble, I’ve just finished co-editing a collection of short stories by Alabama women, titled Belles’ Letters II, due out in spring 2017, and, as a personal project, my sister and I are putting together a collection of our mother’s poems, something self-publishing platforms now make it easy to do.

9. YOUR FAVORITE PLACE IN ALABAMA.

My favorite place is the place I live, on a little lake in Cottondale that astonishes me every day with its natural beauty, in a house that has nurtured my life for more than twenty years. Apart from that, I’m always drawn to Alabama’s beaches, reveling in the moment you can open the car windows and smell the ocean, even though you can’t quite see it yet.

10. ONE THING YOU NEED RIGHT NOW TO HELP YOU AS A WRITER.

Perhaps this is something we all need: to renew my faith daily that what I am doing matters. I reach back to the writers from the past whose work I admire, outward into the present to the writers I connect to across the state and beyond, forward to readers who might encounter my work in the future and find something of value there. We live in a time of an abundance of tools for writers, but also an abundance of distractions, so most of all I need reminders to stay focused, keep the faith, and write what needs writing.

Learn more about AWC member Jennifer Horne from her wonderful blog.

Also, put her on your calendars for April of next year, where she will be at the Alabama Writer’s Symposium and the Alabama Book Festival reading from her new collection of poems, Little Wanderer (Salmon Press, 2016).